Max Walker-Silverman’s “Rebuilding” is a gentle, empathetic ode to resilience—a story of a man at a crossroads he never planned to reach. Inspired by his own family, the director of the excellent “A Love Song” presents the story of a simple man faced with complex decisions. The writer/director was inspired to make this film after his grandmother’s house burned in a fire—not because of the loss, but because of what grew out of it: community and second chances. That personal connection to the region and the persistence of sympathy beats in the heart of “Rebuilding,” allowing its few writerly contrivances in the final act to be easily forgiven because of how much we’ve come to care about these people. As much as Max clearly does.
Arguably the Actor of the Year with his work in “The Mastermind,” “The History of Sound,” “Wake Up Dead Man,” and now this, Josh O’Connor stars as Dusty, a truly ordinary guy living on a ranch on the west side of the Rockies. Before the film opens, Dusty’s life has been destroyed by wildfire, forcing him to take up residence in a FEMA trailer, surrounded by others who have suffered similar losses. Walker-Silverman sketches the lives of people around Dusty, including a woman named Mali (Kali Reis), whose husband stayed back to protect their property, leaving her a single mother, but he doesn’t surround his protagonist with the melodrama that could have turned “Rebuilding” treacly. All of these weather-worn faces around Dusty serve as a backdrop instead of heartstring-tuggers, a reminder that his story is only one of many.
That story is about a man being pulled from his plan to relocate to Montana by a rekindled relationship with his daughter, Callie Rose (a wonderful Lily LaTorre). Dusty still has a good rapport with Callie’s mom, Ruby (Meghann Fahy), and even his former in-law, Bess (Amy Madigan, about as far from her “Weapons” character as possible). Callie Rose comes to Dusty’s trailer to visit, bringing stuff to make it her home too, even as Dusty knows he’s going to leave her behind. There’s a delicate tension to these scenes as O’Connor captures the emotional turmoil of just watching Callie Rose put glow-in-the-dark stars on the wall, knowing he’s going to break her heart.
It’s a bit unclear why Dusty and Callie Rose weren’t close before the fire, but the truth is that the title of Walker-Silverman’s film could be read as a rebuilding of a father-daughter dynamic rather than property. That idea—that it is the people we know and what we do for one another that are the true load-bearing beams of our lives—echoes through so much of “Rebuilding.” It’s there in the scene in which Callie Rose goes over her family tree or Bess brings out old photographs. It’s the people that matter, not where they lived or what they did. There’s a fantastic beat wherein Madigan just looks at her granddaughter with the kind of warmth that comes from true love for a child or grandchild, something that can’t really be put into words.
There’s so much about “Rebuilding” that succeeds beyond words. It’s in the way that O’Connor swallows his feelings, or Callie Rose turns her body after getting bad news, or just a tear rolling down a cheek. It’s in how brilliantly O’Connor portrays the body language of a man who doesn’t have the vocabulary to express his conflicted emotions. He slouches when put on the spot, but he also sits up straight when he needs to, such as in a fantastic scene in which Dusty speaks about how he keeps remembering random things he lost in the fire but worries about the ones he’s forgetting. It’s clearly a thought he’s had before, alone at night in his trailer, thinking about how something as elusive as memory and something as tactile as a possession have been burned together in a single loss. And Dusty’s biggest concern now is how both are drifting into ash on the wind.
So much of “Rebuilding” rings artistically true that it’s forgivable that a few of the twists—including a death and Dusty’s final offer—stretch that sense of genuine feeling. Walker-Silverman, LaTorre, and O’Connor have laid such a strong foundation by that point that writerly conveniences can be overlooked in a way they wouldn’t without the truth of these performances. If anything, we want Dusty and Callie Rose to rebuild their lives together. And not just to rebuild it back the way it was, but to make it stronger and better than it ever could have been before.
